Thanks to their efforts we now have a site where we can view planning alerts for each council across the country. Not all councils are there yet, but it’s a great start.

As expected, the applications are available as XML, JSON and GeoRSS, which made it easy for me to – in two hours – produce a WordPress plugin that allows any self-hosted WordPress site to display a widget of recent planning applications.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that since it was of the highest public importance that a democratically elected governmental body should be open to uninhibited public criticism, and since the threat of civil actions for defamation would place an undesirable fetter on the freedom to express such criticism, it would be contrary to the public interest for institutions of central or local government to have any right at common law to maintain an action for damages for defamation; and that, accordingly, the plaintiff was not entitled to bring an action for libel against the defendants, and its statement of claim would be struck out

So there is your case law against Councils bringing defamation actions. This one is against a newspaper, it’d be interesting to see whether a council ever tries to bring action against a blogger or hyperlocal.

There’s plenty of discussion going on in Government about putting data out and what to put out and how to put it out and all that nonsense. Especially in local government.

It sounds like there’s concern that releasing data isn’t good enough and that government has a responsibility to put that data into a format that can be consumed by citizens.

This is true, they should be putting information out in a way that is usable and accessible. At the same time though, it’d be good if they just put all the raw data out and let anyone develop their own usable, accessible versions. It’d give government a head start in developing their own versions as they can see all the innovative uses of the raw data and take a cue from them.

Birmingham City Council’s web site is a great example of where it could help. A new council web site finally arrived late and over budget and was subject to a lot of criticism. Subsequently, a bunch of passionate (some would say crazy) brum folks made their own version by pulling the data from wherever they could.

How about if BCC had put their data out there and invited the brum community to do their worst? I have no doubt BCC would have a whole host of examples of good uses of that data. Examples that they could then adapt and build into the new site. Let’s call it data democracy, shall we?

Potentially, this could have a knock on impact on a couple of fronts. Hopefully, this will help prove the case for cloud-computing and social media to the commercial sector and increase up take of this next generation of IT.

I’d also like to see this replicated over here in the UK, encouraging local authorities to shake off the shackles of oppression forced on them by their IT consultants and outsourcers.

When we spoke about the e-petitions system Nicky Getgood mentioned The Rainbow in Digbeth which, faced with a noise abatement order, managed to get over 2,500 people to join a Facebook group in support. The local authority wouldn’t accept this as a form of petition, which I can understand as it’s hard to verify. However, I suggested that it needs to be as easy if not easier for people to sign a recognised petition as it is to join a Facebook group.

So with the US government pushing tools like Facebook to federal agencies is there now a case for government at all levels to build things like Facebook and Twitter apps that allow people to engage on their platform of choice?

Thanks to Pez I get a DM reminding me to put my bin out. How about a Facebook app that does the same thing for those not on Twitter? Or a Facebook app that shows me planning applications in my area as part of my news feed?

There are more possibilities that will come to me after another cuppa but that’s a start.

David Stuart suggested at LSMC that we shouldn’t make it easier for people to do things like sign petitions. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned from Daily Mail polls?

So is giving local authorities that freedom really a good thing? And while we’re all going on about digital engagement, is this level of digital engagement a good idea, or giving a voice to those ‘busy-bodies’, or another why for government to provide a good service to citizens?